


Wondering

by sister_coyote



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-27
Updated: 2008-03-27
Packaged: 2017-10-06 21:03:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_coyote/pseuds/sister_coyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"But the simple truth was that he wanted to see her rather badly, and, in the end, that was worth the risk of rejection. He was good at dealing with rejection by now, after all."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wondering

The sad fact was, it took Jean a good five minutes of standing in front of the door before he could bring himself to knock. Maybe even ten if he was being honest with himself. He nearly talked himself out of it four different times: maybe she didn't want to be disturbed, it was rude to just drop by, they hadn't been dating very long if they even were technically dating, he didn't want to impose. But the simple truth was that he wanted to see her rather badly, and, in the end, that was worth the risk of rejection. He was good at dealing with rejection by now, after all. So he knocked.

She opened the door and rendered him briefly speechless. It was still weird to see her in casual clothes, _sandals_, her hair pinned up but in a sloppy knot that was nothing like the proper, no-strands-escaping clip she used for work, the way her face was softer, her eyes different . . . .

"Jean," she said, "hello," and smiled, and he smiled back, too, an automatic reaction as unavoidable as kicking when the doctor taps your knee.

"Hi," he said. "Um. I was in the neighborhood and I wondered if maybe you'd like to get lunch. Or if you've eaten, maybe see a play. Or. Something." Trying to make it sound casual and failing, _utterly_ failing, and all he could hope for was that she'd find it endearing.

Her smile slipped a little. "I'm sorry," she said. "I was just getting ready to wash my dog."

Oh. _Great_. He'd heard that one before, and all its cousins, from past almost-maybe-girlfriends—wash the dog, wash the cat, wash her hair, and once, memorably, wash her hamster (and at that point he would have actually preferred 'I'm not attracted to you, leave me alone so I can figure out how to shag your commanding officer,' because that at least wouldn't've insulted his intelligence)—but he'd expected that, when Riza lost interest, she'd at least tell him the truth. She usually wasn't one to beat around the bush.

Something must've shown in his face, he'd never been very good at hiding what he was thinking, because her smile softened and she said, "No, I mean I actually _am_ washing my dog." She rested her hip against the doorframe, tilted her head, and said, "Do you want to come in?"

_Oh_. And suddenly he was smiling again, grinning really. "Yeah."

Hayate danced around his ankles, clearly aware that something was going on out of the ordinary. Jean leaned down to scratch behind his ears, then followed Riza into the kitchen, where she'd set up a tub on the tiles, with a bottle of dog shampoo and a pile of old towels to one side. Jean decided to make himself useful by catching Hayate—no small feat. The dog was almost pathologically well-trained, but no dog was _that_ obedient in the face of a bath, and at any rate Hayate's loyalties lay firmly with his mistress. After an undignified chase around the sofa, Jean cornered Hayate, scruffed him, and hauled him into the kitchen. Once in sight of Riza, the dog submitted to his fate, allowed himself to be stripped of his collar, and only squirmed a little when introduced to the warm bathwater.

Riza bathed him with characteristic efficiency, and the sharp smell of the shampoo and less-than-pleasant odor of wet dog filled the air—hardly romantic, but seeing Riza like this, her hands buried in Hayate's damp fur, wearing jeans and looking relaxed and exasperated and affectionate—even if it was affectionate toward her dog—was better than a meal out any day. Jean's contribution was mostly in foiling Hayate's sporadic, halfhearted escape attempts. At the end, Riza hauled Hayate out of the water, sullen and dripping, set him on his paws and said, "The towel, quick—" The dog was too fast for her. He braced himself and shook furiously, sending droplets of water all over the tiles and the cabinets. Riza stared at him and then began to laugh, soap on her wrist and her hair half-freed of its knot and bright gold in the afternoon light coming through the windows, and she was so pretty like that that Jean wanted more than anything to bear her down to the damp tile floor and kiss her breathless.

Instead, he grabbed a towel and took a flying leap after Hayate before the dog could make a sodden break for the living room. Between the two of them, he and Riza got the dog dry and then released him, whereupon he fled and curled up in a damp, fuzzy lump of injured dignity in front of the sofa.

Riza stretched and rolled to her feet, and then turned a little toward Jean and said, "Now I think _I_ need a bath," with such clear invitation in her voice that all Jean could do was squeak, "Okay!"

Growing up, Havoc hadn't had much association between bathing and sensuality—summer meant a cool outdoor shower, and winter meant a tin bath in front of the woodstove and lots of hauling water off the top of the woodstove to get any kind of warmth. Joining the army had meant that suddenly his world included hot showers with decent water pressure, but it also meant that those hot showers with decent water pressure were done in the company of a dozen other men, swearing and complaining, and constantly being on guard for someone flicking your ass with a damp towel. His bathing routine pre-Riza had consisted of get in-get clean-get out, with aid from a bar of soap and a store-brand shampoo, and when he wasn't with her, that was still his routine. Her extensive collection of various things to make the water in the bath scented, or fizzy, or moisturizing (moisturizing? how did you get more moist than water already was?), or oily, or colored—it all baffled him, and that was even without getting into the confusing issue of salt scrubs, mud masks, and oatmeal in soap. It was one of a comparatively few areas in which she was actually stereotypically feminine (certainly nothing else in her beauty routine was, as attested by the one tube of lipstick at the back of her medicine cabinet, so dried from disuse that it had actually cracked), and he found that kind of surprising despite himself.

But there was really not much to argue with when it came to warm, good-smelling water and a beautiful, wet, _naked_ woman in his lap. The bath wasn't really big enough for two, especially with him as tall as he was, and accounting for the space bubbles took up it surprised him that any water fit in the tub at all. Certainly there wasn't really room to try for sex in the bath, not without courting disaster and a soaked bathmat. But he was content to let her rest against his chest, her hips bracketed by his bent knees, the water lapping over both of them and the bubbles making him sneeze and her laugh.

Afterwards he found tension in her shoulders, so he coaxed her down to bed, gave her a massage—a real one, not an excuse-to-put-hands-on-your-breasts one—to work the kinks and knots out of her neck, the muscles of her back. He had a terrible track record with relationships, he never knew the right thing to say, the right gesture, but he was good at doing things, and this he could do.

She turned over, and he picked up her foot, stroked the arch with enough pressure not to tickle, rubbed her ankles, and smiled when she said, "You're going to spoil me."

"You deserve it." Her foot flexed in his hands and he looked up to find that she wasn't quite smiling anymore, and his stomach twisted and he didn't know why.

"Yes, but," she said, and then her mouth worked briefly as though she were trying to find words. He watched her fingertips scratch at her comforter, as though she could dig them up there. ". . . But I wish I could convince you to believe that you don't _need_ to do this for me to want you. To want to be with you."

He gaped at her, her foot still in his hand, forgotten. She drew her knees up and folded them. Still flushed from the bath, still naked, hair dark gold with water, even more miraculous than in civilian clothes, and completely baffling.

"It's not that I don't appreciate it," she said, "or that I want you to stop. I don't. But it feels like you're trying to earn something, and that's not how it is. Or not how it ought to be, anyway." She regarded him over her folded arms, and her eyes were so dark, so beautiful. "Did you really think I was fobbing you off with an excuse, earlier? Does this feel so tenuous to you?"

". . . you know my dating history, do you really have to ask that?"

That did make her smile a little, but sadly. "Jean," she said. "I like you. I really do. It's just that I'm not any better at this than you are."

He couldn't think what to say to that. Sure, everyone knew that Hawkeye either didn't date much or did so with a level of stealth that would put Special Ops to shame, but he hadn't . . . thought much about it. Certainly she didn't complain about her love life. But then, she never complained about anything really, so maybe that didn't mean anything. And she was such a beautiful woman when you could see past the Lieutenant Hawkeye-ness of her, but then, maybe nobody ever did look past the Lieutenant Hawkeye-ness of her. It'd taken him years to do it himself, and he'd seen her every day.

So he took her hand and brought it up to his mouth, kissed her knuckles. She softened, not just her eyes but all of her, unfolding her knees and reaching for him.

"Come here," she said, and he went, crawling up the bed to kiss her.

"I like you too," he said. She grinned at him, and she looked almost giddy. And oh, it wasn't a declaration of love, no flowers, no wine, no fancy restaurant, but it was true, and it was _good_. She kissed him again and then again, her tongue brushing his lips when she drew back, and then kissed his throat and down his chest and rolled him over.

"My turn to do something for you," she murmured into his breastbone, and he could feel his stomach quiver with anticipation, and the thought swam like a fish through his mind: _no-she-doesn't-mean-she-can't-mean_ and then as she kissed lower, stroking his thigh with one hand, propping herself with the other _oh-hell-she-_does_-mean —_

And then: soft lips around him, warm mouth, her tongue curling just a little, and she'd always been . . . not aggressive exactly but assertive, during sex, and this was no different, oh god. He tangled his fingers in her damp hair and fisted the sheet with his other hand and tried desperately not to thrust into the hot wet of her mouth.

And it wasn't like he'd never done this before, but he hadn't done it _much_, his relationships didn't tend to get as far as sex very often and even when they did . . . And it was _so_ good, good enough to make his thighs shake and his hands settle restlessly on her shoulders, her hair, looking helplessly down to watch as she slid slowly up and paused with just the head in her mouth and then swallowed him down again.

Her eyes flickered up to meet his, and her pupils were all expanded and the look made him roll his head back and jerk his hips a little despite all his restraint and just come.

She slid up his body as he gasped and gasped and tried to summon the scattered parts of his mind together—he could feel the flex of her muscles, strong under deceptively soft skin, the catch of her callused fingers against his skin as she spanned his ribcage with her hands and nuzzled his throat again, kissed his jaw. Dazed, he ran his fingers through her hair and kissed her, and then eased her gently over onto her back to return the favor.

She tasted like musk and sweat and something elusive and she moaned and _moved_ with him, in a way that made him twitch even though it was way too soon to get hard again. He nuzzled soft fair curls, mouthed the join between her legs and her body, and then returned his mouth between her legs. It wasn't something he'd had a lot of practice at, he wasn't totally sure what he was doing, but she was so _wet_, and she kept making soft intoxicating noises and when his tongue found the right spot she tensed her thighs and snarled. He should've tried to draw it out a little, make it memorable, but she was gasping and arching and tangling her fingers in his hair and he couldn't help himself, greedy for her orgasm.

Afterward he dropped kisses on her thigh, slid up the bed to curl around her. When her breathing slowed to normal, he kissed her, her eyelids, the bridge of her nose, her mouth, and said, "I do have a hard time believing you've ever had trouble finding a date. You're so—you're just—"

"Thank you," she said, her forehead against the dip of his throat. "I've thought the same about you, you know. Despite all your whining."

"I don't whine."

". . . I like you, Jean, but I'm not stupid."

"Well. You never said anything, anyway."

She smiled at him, eyes closed, hand tracing absently down the ridges of his stomach. "Well, neither did you."

"Point." The afternoon sun turned her to white and gold, and he felt a little bit like something heavy was sitting on his chest, a little bit out of breath, looking at her. "Hungry?"

"A little. I don't want to go anywhere. There's some pasta in the cupboard somewhere."

"The truth comes out—you just like me for my cooking skills." He scratched his fingertips through her hair, rubbed the back of her neck, satisfied for now with the soft way her breasts rose and fell against his side.

"They don't hurt." She opened her eyes and kissed his shoulder. "But I also like you for the way you look in a tight shirt."

_I like you._ It was good, it was a start. "I aim to please," he said.


End file.
